While
studying archaeology in England, Jim Sanborn was asked to write
a paper on Romanesque sculptures. To gain a better understanding
of his subjects, Sanborn tried his hand at sculpting such a piece
from stone. After that, there was no turning back.

Sanborn’s latest creation — “A,A”
— will sit at the University of Houston’s M.D. Anderson
Library. Installation of the sculpture, which cost $240,000, was
completed last week.

“Jim Sanborn has a great deal of experience
doing large public commissions all around the world,” said
Nancy Hixon, assistant director of the Blaffer Gallery, the Art
Museum of the University of Houston, and coordinator of university
collections. “Library officials thought his sculpture was
quite appropriate in furthering the discussions among the university’s
diverse student population.”

Sanborn is most famous for his “Kryptos”
sculpture at the Central Intelligence Agency’s headquarters
in Langley, Virginia. Composed of lodestone, polished red granite
and quartz, “Kryptos” features thousands of letter characters
containing encrypted messages. Only a handful of those messages
have been cracked.

This latest piece is the product of a year’s
worth of work, Sanborn said. Made mostly of copper and bronze, the
sculpture is comprised of snippets of poems, novels and prose from
languages from all over the world, including Arabic, Russian, Spanish
and Chinese.

“I wanted to choose text that would peak the
interest of the people who view it,” Sanborn said. “The
issues that are discussed within the text have to do with relationships,
and I feel many students can relate to that. I also hope students
will interact with each other when translating some of the languages
they are unfamiliar with.”

At night, a built-in projector will shine light
through the sculpture, reflecting the text onto the library’s
exterior walls. In the library’s third-floor reading room,
bronze panels along the guardrails also will contain portions of
poems and other literature. A 24-ft.-long bronze scroll detailing
the history of papermaking will hang from the ceiling to the first
floor.

“I think the piece will make quite a nice
statement for the library and for the university,” Hixon said.
“All of Sanborn’s projects are very intriguing.”